March 25, Thursday. From Our Campsite, Back Through Bahariya,

to Our Third Campsite in the White Desert

Up as always at 5.30 when camping. Morning light hasn't yet quite beaten out the darkness, the sky still has that deep purple hue that presages dawn, but promises the stars a few more minutes to shine. I'd slept out last night till it got too cold, under a multitude of stars too many to count.

I laze around in my tent for half an hour, finally emerging as the sun remakes the colors of the desert. I break camp; the others are stirring, Hamada cooking, Amgad vanished to perform his morning ablutions, my companions stretching and yawning; we have breakfast, and then, while the car is being loaded, head out over the sand for a morning walk, strung out across the dunes like little gems of color set in a sea of glittering gold.

The long drive back to Bahariya is broken by only a single stop. By the side of the road rests the carcass of a World War II fighter. It's German. Little is left but the decaying tubing of the fuselage, bits and pieces of the land gear. The engine, instruments, rubber, fabric covering, weaponry, and anything else salvageable was stripped off long ago. A few flattened, rusting tins poke out of the sand. Did the occupants survive? There are no bleached skulls, no fragments of bone as you see in the rock tombs; perhaps they walked away, perhaps their bodies were afforded a decent burial (there was a lot of German sympathy in Egypt during the war, in the hopes that the Germans would liberate Egypt from the British).

Hamada has invited us to his house for lunch. We meet his family -- mother, sister, his girlfriend's friend, and a little boy named Mohammed who lives next door (his father's out of town). The house is on a side street, with an unprepossessing front, but inside is delightful and comfortable -- a capacious living room with chairs, couch, and a table, where we ate, adjoined by the combination work room and kitchen, with a small but serviceable oven in the corner. (That's where the women waited while Hamada and his guests dined.) The bedrooms lay beyond. In the rear the house gave onto a broad garden growing dill, hot peppers, and other vegetables, and a pen with sheep, goats, and a cow we heard but didn't see; farther back stood a shady vine arbor. Lunch is one of the best meals we've ever had -- grilled chicken, macaroni and cheese baked in the oven, spicy salad with dill and tomatoes, cucumbers, potatoes, and that unbeatable Bahariya rice, all laid out on a tablecloth with a multi-colored design and a background of green, the color of the Prophet. Hamada's getting married in August and is busy finishing the house he and his new bride will be occupying. Already one of his sisters lives and works in Cairo -- so the house is emptying out.

We hung around Bawati a while, restocking our supplies for our next night camping, this time in the White Desert. Our drive out there takes a while -- we must pass first through the Black Desert, a geological feature clearly dominated by volcanism, with little cinder cones that remind me of the same features scattered over parts of the Sonoran Desert of the US Southwest. These cones must be the source of the volcanic ejects one sees all over the Western Desert. From there we pass into the White Desert, with its extraordinary rock formations, and pitch our tents after the sun goes down. In the evening, once things are quiet, Zoe and Eph play cards, Amgad and Jimmy chess, while I write in my journal. This campsite, unlike our others, attracts other campers; we see their fires in the near distance, hear their voices carried on the breeze. I prefer the other places, more isolated, less popular. But who really can complain about a dozen other visitors in a landscape so extraordinary, in a country whose capital pulsates with millions?

For the previous day, click March 24; for the next day, March 26;

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